Beyond Easy Listening Christianity

Posted on August 6, 2023 by Steve Simms

Easy listening music is defined as: “a type of music that is not complicated, serious, or difficult.” That sounds like easy listening Christianity.

Easy listening
In a congregation
To a Sunday talk
Seldom brings genuine
Heart transformation,
But personal revelation
From the risen Jesus
Will directly change
Your inner situation.
Open your heart to hear
Jesus the Christ today!

Easy listening sermons seldom pop anybody’s bubble, rock anyone’s boat, or save someone’s soul. They just keep the same ole rhythm and blues rolling along. They say soothing sentences that won’t shake up a lost soul.

Easy listening sermons are quiet, agreeable talks that don’t require much of your attention. They sift through the Gospel and soften it so they can shelter people from the life-shaking sound of God’s voice.

Easy listening Christianity is sweet and soothing and never intruding. It’s polished and packaged to be palatable for passive people. Easy listening Christianity is an undemanding backdrop and mood setter that makes people feel comfortable about their spiritual condition without feeling a need to do anything about it.

Easy listening should be a genre of music, not a format for church. When Christianity embraced the easy listening Sunday morning format it shifted from being Spirit-led to public opinion driven.

For church to be instrumental in changing people’s hearts, it needs to be much more than a weekly, easy listening sermon. It needs to be raw, real, and Spirit-led! If we aren’t willing to listen to and be led by God’s Spirit when we gather with brothers and sisters in Christ, we won’t have the courage to listen and be led by the Spirit when we are around anybody else.

Most Sunday morning church sounds are easy listening. There’s rarely an electrifying bridge to effectively rock and roll a stoney heart. (Some people even make a playlist of their favorite easy listening sermons.)

The Bible isn’t easy listening. That’s why many people avoid reading it or hearing what it says. If you want people to hear the Gospel, you must first capture their attention. The Bible way is not to bore people with the Gospel but to transform them with it! Easy listening Christianity doesn’t do that.

Do you want more than easy listening? Try this: When you are truly in Christ, you remain in the world but are no longer of the world. In Him you live and move and have your being. Although you reside physically in the world, you are called to abide in the living Jesus and in every issue to be always on His side, not the popular side, even when it makes people decide to reject you. To be in Christ is to be an outsider–a stranger and pilgrim who abstains from the spirit of the world–a citizen of the kingdom of God, seated with Jesus in heavenly places.

Words that say
All is well
Clear the way
That leads to?

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Be ware of religious lip-sync

Posted on August 5, 2023 by Steve Simms

Giving God
Some lip-sync
And a quick wink
Shows that we lack
A strong heart-link
With Jesus the Christ.

When our heart
Is out of sync
With the living Jesus
And our life
Is going down the sink,
It won’t help us
To merely lip-sync
Nice religious words.

To many Christians lip-sync their faith, but Jesus calls us to the real deal! Christian lip-syncing is far from the kingdom of God.

When Christianity sinks into simply lip-syncing praise lyrics, it has no power to change lives. Let Jesus sync your heart to His. Praise and worship music should never be lip-sync songs!

Jesus doesn’t like religious lip-sync–moving your lips with words about the Lord without God’s praise overflowing from deep within your heart. Jesus said: “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.'”

Let the Bible seek deep into your heart. Don’t just lip-sync it.

A lip-synced sermon that comes from the mind instead of overflowing from the heart is never very powerful. Church shouldn’t be a lip-sync competition about who can best quote the preacher’s words and most enthusiastically praise his performance.

Impurities in our heart will cling to us forever unless we let Christ’s blood cleans us and make us holy deep inside our innermost being. Go beyond lip-sync and be made whole!

A church needs more
Than a minister
Who lip-syncs like a pro.
It needs hungry hearts
That want to grow
Closer to the risen Jesus,
Not just to know
More data about Him.

A church service
Shouldn’t be lip service.
It should avoid
The lip-sync stink.

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Dead wirters’ books (and their lively work in my heart)

Posted on August 5, 2023 by Steve Simms

I love books, especially those written through the centuries by men and women of God whose words burn in my heart. God has led me to hundreds of such books by Christ-followers who have been promoted to the glories of Heaven. I walk into a bookstore, a library, or even a yard sale and a book shouts my name. I take it home and reading it changes my life!

It’s hard to let books like that go, so I watched my book collection grow and grow. And I treasured it. But one day God told me to let it go. So, finally I gave it to a Christian ministry, and they said they would send it to Christian leaders in a poor country. Many months later I was in their headquarters, and I asked someone if they had shipped the books that I gave them. This person said he thought that they were still in a closet down the hall. I opened the closet door and there were my former books dumped in a big pile, tattered and broken. I was disappointed that their journey had ended in such a way. Then I heard God say, “What those books have done and worked in you will never go away.”

My heart still burns with their words and as time goes by God continues to bring more books from saints gone on, for me to soak up in my spirit. I love words from my brothers and sisters in the past that match what God is saying and doing in me and inspire me to be “useless before God” and to let Him have His way.

God shows me His way through the greatest book of all. I love it so much I rarely miss a day of partaking of its glory, insight, and delight–the book of many writers but one author. God’s Spirit, “The Comforter,” continually heals my heart when I absorb the living words within it covers.

If you’re convinced
You need a zone
To find comfort,
You’ve missed the point
Of God’s Spirit,
“The Comforter.”
Holy Spirit,
Be my comfort!

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Following the Head of Christ’s body

Posted on August 4, 2023 by Steve Simms

Jesus Christ is able to be the present, living, and active Lord, King, Leader, and Director of HIs followers as they gather in His name to each one listen to and obey Him. May we surrender all human control to the eternally resurrected Jesus so that He can be gloriously revealed in our midst to be the literal Head of His body and not just a figurehead.

(I witnessed this happening at the Asbury awakening. Lord, let it continue in gatherings of Christ-followers around the world!)

When Christians gather
In Jesus’ name
And begin to train
To listen to Him
And let Him lead,
He begins to reign
And rule among them.

To be Spirit-led
Is to let Jesus
Be your living Head.
He’s no longer dead.
You’ve read what He said.
Now it’s time to do
What He says to you.

To be asleep is to be without conscience awareness. Wake up to conscious awareness of the risen Jesus.

John 3:16 is the loving call of the God of both mercy and justice for those who have rejected His love and chosen to rebel against Him to allow Him to rescue them from the dreadful consequences of their choices and actions through His substitutionary atonement. Whosoever will, let them come to Jesus and be forgiven, rescued, and restored to harmony with God. Lord, have mercy on me a sinner! The theme of God wanting to rescue people from their rebellion by offering mercy and grace is woven throughout the Bible.

Scripture teaches that God’s omnipotence doesn’t override our free will and make us robots. His love and grace beckon us to lay aside our rebellion and submit to His will, but He doesn’t force our obedience. Human free will is not stronger than God. It is a gift from God that we humans greatly abuse. God wants sons and daughters who return to Him of their own choice (like the prodigal son), not as robots who He forces to love Him.

That Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God made atoning sacrifice for humanity is a major theme of the New Testament and was foreshadowed throughout the Old Testament. My heart overflows with gratitude for His substitutionary atonement!

Disagreeing with someone’s belief system is far from judging them or being unloving. Several people who love me disagree with some of my views, beliefs, and lifestyle choices. I would never accuse them of judging me.

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Experiencing the joy of direct inner government by God

Posted on August 3, 2023 by Steve Simms

The kingdom of God is government by God not by people, for God not for people, and of God not of people. It’s about God’s purposes, not ours. It’s His kingdom, not ours. You can hide from human government, but you can’t hide from the kingdom of God. He knows everything that you think and do.

The kingdom of God is the direct government of God that bypasses human leaders, hierarchies, and political systems. It happens unobserved because “the kingdom of God is within you.” When Christ-followers allow King Jesus to actually rule and direct them from within then they begin to experience the present-day leading of the Holy Spirit as “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” and their citizenship in God’s kingdom becomes a practical reality, not just a theological concept.

The kingdom (direct government) of God must be established inside of you. Every choice you make, every action you take, brings you closer to the direct government (kingdom) of God or leads you away from it. When the kingdom (government) of God is present in a human heart there is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

To experience the direct, inner government of God requires that we cultivate an honest, tender, open, submissive, humble, vulnerable, and compassionate heart that is willing to continually and freely receive God’s grace and correction. Without that kind of heart, we can experience religion, but we will be far from the kingdom of God.

Direct government by God and government by self cannot both be in control of a human heart at the same moment. The calling on a Christian is to decrease the influence of self and to increase God’s direct government of all their thoughts, feelings, opinions, and desires — to obey King Jesus more and more and king-self less and less. Christians are called out of the kingdom of self-focus and into the kingdom (direct inner government) of God.

Self-focus will always resist the direct, inner government of God. To experience the kingdom of God, self-focus must be abandoned. You were born to be a “supernaturalized” citizen of the kingdom of God voluntarily living under His direct inner rule, not to be ensnared and abused by the kingdom of darkness determining your thoughts, feelings, and desires.

God’s grace empowers us and invites us to voluntarily submit to His direct moment-by-moment government of our life. God doesn’t force us to obey Him against our will. Because in the direct government of God (His kingdom of light) there’s no way to cover up truth, human nature is to avoid the kingdom of God. For the kingdom of God to reign within, the strongholds, imaginations, and desires of self must be cast down and brought into obedience to Christ Jesus.

When self rules, bondage and misery reign within even when self lies and denies that they exist. The direct government of God occurs within you. It doesn’t come from outward authorities. When the direct government of God is allowed to take charge of a human heart, Jesus calms the inner storms and peaceful rivers flow.

People can’t be forced to obey God. Human political systems can’t be the kingdom of God, but they can maintain social order while God builds His kingdom inside human hearts.

“Don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together,” means don’t avoid opening your heart to Jesus as you hang out and interact by God’s Spirit with other Christ-followers as Christ’s ekklesia (town hall meeting).

Christ’s ekklesia is called out of systems of human hierarchy to function in obedience to His active Headship and direction and thereby manifest the kingdom of God. When Christianity became churchish it lost the freedom of Spirit-led, heart-felt spontaneity that was characteristic of the earliest Christ-followers who met like the ancient Greek town hall meeting called ekklesia as described in 1 Corinthians 14:26.

The direct inner government of God is available to you. Are you available to the direct inner government of God?

For God’s kingdom to come your kingdom needs to go. There’s only room for one king inside of you!

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Wake-Up to false teaching with honesty and love!

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Steve Simms

I woke up this morning with these two short poems in my mind and posted them on Facebook before coming to today’s Wake-Up Call blog post that warns Christians about false teachers and false teaching:

If you fake it
Till you make it
What you make
Will be fake.

The simplicity
Of authenticity
Never needs the spin
Of publicity.

The first thing I saw when I went to Facebook this morning was the picture of a thin cross posted by Carol Custer Perry with the words “This is the real deal. I didn’t photoshop the flame off this one.”

The next thing I saw on Facebook was “This is a great statement from JD: False teaching, while often cloaked in plausible shifts in interpretive methodology, is usually driven by an attempt to accommodate or otherwise pave the way for the expansion of human appetites and novel ideologies concerning the human body,” posted by Janet Wehrle.

Before I went to bed last night, I posted this on Facebook: “Christianity needs to align with the teachings of Jesus and the earliest Christ-followers (as found in the Bible). To depart from them is to abandon the faith.” Yesterday morning I posted: “To want or proclaim a God with no consequences or judgement is to want chaos and injustice.”

It appears that the past 24 hours the Holy Spirit has been confirming to me the importance of this morning’s Wake-Up Call warning. I hope Christians who embrace the term “deconstruction of the faith” will wake-up and begin to follow Jesus and the writings of His earliest followers instead of their own appetites and desires.

It’s time to disassociate from false teachers by “speaking the truth in love,” and truly loving them (but not approving of their wrong behavior and false teaching) even when they treat us like they are our enemies. Honest and kind disagreement when we believe someone is in dangerous error isn’t our judging them. It’s a loving warning that we believe they are in danger of creating harmful consequences for themselves, for other people, and for society at large.

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Why ekklesia? What’s the purpose of going beyond church to Christ’s Spirit-led town hall meeting?

Posted on August 1, 2023 by Steve Simms

Jesus had a purpose when He said: “On this rock (direct personal revelation from the living God) I will build My ekklesia (the Greek word mistranslated as church). Ekklesia was the proper name of the fully participatory town hall meeting in ancient Greek cities. The purpose of the Greek ekklesia was to democratically govern a city. The purpose of Christ’s ekklesia is to train people to submit to and manifest the government (kingdom) of God under the direct personal Headship and command of the risen King Jesus.

Jesus wants to demonstrate His presence and power to people in real ways that transform their lives. The purpose of His ekklesia is to cultivate an environment where He can actively do that–where His followers can learn to be literally led and empowered by God’s Spirit actively working inside them, not by their own thoughts, feelings, and desires. Then they will begin to change the culture in the country where they live by continually following and obeying the living Jesus and demonstrating His supernatural presence and power wherever they are, through their lifestyle that overflows with the gifts and the fruit of the Spirit.

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Greeting matters (Just look at Romans 16!)

Posted on August 1, 2023 by Steve Simms

Warmly and openly greet and connect heart-to-heart with God’s people wherever you encounter them. Take time to recognize them as spiritual family members. Find the hope of glory in them by opening your heart to encounter the presence of the risen Jesus in them.

Obedience to the 50+ “one another” commands begins with greeting. Before we can effectively “bear one another’s burdens,” before we can actively “encourage one another,” before we can sincerely “bear with and forgive one another,” before we can truly “be of the same mind with one another,” before we can honesty “confess our sins to one another,” before we can actually “submit to one another,” we need to greet, welcome, and acknowledge one another with an open heart.

For me, every open-hearted encounter with a sister or brother in Christ is a taste of Heaven. Heart-felt greetings are powerful! Yet, they are easy to miss. When you come across a Christ-follower, take some time to find and appreciate Christ in them! You’ll be glad you did!

Anytime your heart is closed the Holy Spirit is quenched. How our world needs more genuine heart-felt connections.

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Jesus the Builder builds with “living stones”

Posted on July 31, 2023 by Steve Simms

Jesus, the Creator of the Universe who became a man, is the Ultimate Builder, but too often His living stones ignore His instructions and do their own thing. When churches deny the living Jesus an active building permit in their worship services, they build them according to their desires and ignore His. When Jesus’ living stones are passive and unresponsive to His direct building instructions, the body of Christ is paralyzed.

Jesus is the Great Bodybuilder. He wants to build His body of living stones by revealing His supernatural presence to them. The risen Jesus builds eternal relationships.

People build church buildings and religious programs. The living Jesus builds powerful and lasting heart connections. If Christ-followers would allow the risen Jesus to build us together heart-to-heart, there would be more Spirit-led Christianity in the world! Surrender your whole heart to God so that you can become a living stone in the spiritual house that Jesus is building on the rock of direct personal revelation from God,

The Master Builder wants to reveal Himself directly to you so that He can build you together, heart-to-heart, with His sold-out followers. Then He can make His people a spiritual house–an assembly where He can freely manifest His power and presence using ordinary people as His Spirit-directed building blocks.

If you have “tasted that the Lord is good,” then “come to Him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to Him” so that “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house a to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices.” That “spiritual house” is Christ’s town hall meeting (ekklesia) where all Christ-followers (living stones) are called out to be Spirit-led priests who actively minister to and serve both God and one another as they are prompted by Jesus, the present and living Head of His ekklesia. (Inspired by 1 Peter 2:1-10.)

Only the living Jesus can assemble “living stones” together as His body built on the rock of direct personal revelation from God. A preacher can’t; a church planter can’t; a program can’t; a sermon can’t; tradition can’t; liturgy can’t; but Jesus can! Will we get our stuff out of His way and “prepare the way of the Lord” so that the risen Jesus can build us together under His direct presence and leadership?

Whoever owns the building can override the living Jesus and control what goes on in church. Instead, let the risen Jesus be the Lord and Master of His assembled people, The organization that owns the building should never be in control of what happens when Christians gather in Jesus’ name.

Be like “living stone” Phoebe (referred to in Romans 16:1-2). Be a humble servant who helps Christ’s Spirit-led town hall meeting (ekklesia) freely function in your city and wherever Jesus sends you and you will be an amazing blessing to many people.

Christianity isn’t built on ideas or idols. It’s built on the rock of inner eyesight full of ongoing revelation that continually beholds the risen Lamb of God.

If churches won’t train Christians to be Spirit-led–to listen to and obey the risen Jesus–who will? (See Romans 8:14.) To brand Christianity around anyone but Jesus is to create a false Gospel.

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Ekklesia — democracy or the kingdom of God?

Posted on July 30, 2023 by Steve Simms

Ancient Greek cities had a town hall meeting where anyone present could speak. It was called the ekklesia. Jesus, in Matthew 16, said He will build His ekklesia.

It’s amazing that Jesus said that He would build His version of the interactive, Greek town hall meeting called ekklesia. It’s also amazing that Christians have mostly ignored the ekklesia model of free expression and implemented a highly programmed, ritualized, and controlled form of worship instead.

In the Greek ekklesia, people listened to each other as equals, not to a single expert lecturer. Christ’s ekklesia drifted from the original model, embraced human hierarchy rather than equality, and called it church.

There was no head (one person leader) in the ancient Greek ekklesia. Decisions were made by voting. However, in Christ’s ekklesia, Jesus is the Head and He actually directs the assembly through His Presence as the Holy Spirit by prompting those present to listen to and obey Him.

The ancient Greek ekklesia was about governing a city. Christ’s ekklesia is about being governed by the Headship of Jesus.

Jesus builds His town hall meeting (ekklesia) on the rock foundation of direct, personal revelation from God (individuals being led by His Spirit). The ancient Greeks built their town hall meeting (ekklesia) on the concept of democracy (individuals expressing and voting their personal feelings, desires, and opinions). Christ’s ekklesia is a manifestation of the kingdom (government) of God as His followers gather to submit to and surrender to the leading and Headship of His Spirit (freedom to deny the flesh and obey the Spirit). The Greek ekklesia was a manifestation of government by the people through majority rule where everyone voted as he saw fit (freedom to obey the flesh).

Paul wrote letters to Christ’s ekklesias in various cities, not to the official city ekklesias (interactive town hall meetings) to proclaim the message of Christ’s ekklesia:

A human heart that’s being transformed and led by the presence and power of the living Jesus is far more powerful that a heart that’s trying to satisfy outward laws and religious rules. The key to being forgiven for the things that make you feel guilty isn’t trying to forgive yourself. It’s to renounce and turn away from them and to ask for and receive God’s forgiveness.

Using your thoughts, words, or actions to embrace what is morally wrong kills inner peace. It slays innocence and guiltlessness. It murders self-respect and crucifies the conscience. It causes the death of direct connection with God and makes Him seem far away because we’re lost in the decay caused by our frequent choices to rebel against His will. We’re caught in the hopeless trap of guilt and death and there’s no way we can restore ourselves to life.

Yet, there is one who is “the way, the truth, and the life.” The Creator became a man named Jesus so that He could suffer the death caused by humanity’s guilt and be raised to life again so that He can daily live in and empower all who will continually believe/rely/depend on His sacrifice for them.

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